


Playing Hide and Seek with a Ghost

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [86]
Category: Hamlet (RMTC 1995), Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: BBW, Castles, Death, F/M, Ghosts, Hide and Seek, Inspired by Shakespeare, Love, Love Stories, Overweight, Princes & Princesses, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Servants, Shakespearean Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28417617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: A servant girl at Elsinore, I soon become entranced by a ghost barely glimpsed at first, but haunting me ever after. The others at the castle soon say that I have lost my mind, until in fear they see the truth...And in fear they soon react...A stripped down version of "A Contagious Mad Sickness of Shadows."
Relationships: Hamlet/Me
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [86]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 3





	Playing Hide and Seek with a Ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Contagious Mad Sickness of Shadows](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169286) by [MistyBeethoven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven). 



> I wanted to call this "A Contagious Mad Sickness of Shadows Redux" until I realized that I had stripped it down so much the title no longer made sense. :/
> 
> Anyway, this is the barren version of that story, the one I strayed from greatly while fleshing it out for the finished product.

A bit of moonlight I saw while standing on the hills and I took it into my head to chase after it at first, thinking that it was but the smallest wisp of my imagination, but growing more certain with each fleeted step that it was real after all.

Sixteen, overweight and the servant at the castle Elsinore, I ran over the countryside in barefeet, my hair a wild mess on top of my head. It was brown and curled and not often brushed, for no one was there to give a damn over what the state of the hair of the woman scrubbing the stones of the castle was in.

Denmark was in a similar state between wildness and being tame and its sky seemed dark with ominous portents on certain days and bright with hope on others. It witnessed me weaving after a ghost, going through graveyards often and seeing the names of those I could not read and would likely not know even if I did.

In daylight I saw him but his image was stronger as day raced towards its leaving and night burst forth in its darkened glory, filled with secrets and strange whisperings of things it was best for man to know not of.

Then I could see clearly what I thought imagination had wrought inside me but was seeming more real the closer it came. Twas a man years older than myself. Attractive and fine of features, he carried himself with a certain grace but was youthful and forceful as well, some betrayal of the prestige of his birthright, I understood.

He had not enjoyed being spotted that first day on the hill outside of the castle and had run from me to avoid my stare. The sky had been cloudy above us, the air full of wind which whipped my tousled hair about my dirty face. He longed to escape me not knowing that this caused me only to pursue him with more eagerness.

Days upon days, and the rare night upon night, we played our game of hide and seek. Perhaps, I should have been frightened by him, ghost as he was. But where is there room for fear when there is too much fun to be had?

For it left me breathless to give chase and to find him wherever he was hiding.

And when he was found, my solitude broke away from me and became the ghost.

And that perhaps is what drew us both to the other.

Our shared loneliness.

After a time, I believe he came looking for me too.

Then I gave him something to pursue.

From the corner of my eyes, I looked for him, running about and making not quite as good a prey for my large size and the fact that I wanted to make sure he would be there should my eyes seek him. But I made an effort for him, knowing twas part of the fun for him to catch and find me someplace in the castle, or on its grounds, and to hunt me down.

And so we were like two children playing games: the ghost of a prince and the servant girl, whom was growing to love him.

* * *

In the kitchen at Elsinore, I was on my hands and knees trying in vain to turn the floor from black back to stone gray. A washer woman was at the sink scrubbing away at the task which she had been given: to make food smeared dishes clean once more. The castle made moan, has it was wont to do, and she swore, claiming the place was surely haunted.

"I have seen a ghost," I told her, that woman of lines and ash which had fallen deeply in between them.

"Thou makest up tales," she scoffed, her elbows moving frantically whilst she scrubbed a dish, drenched heavy with gravy long since dried, she having taken too long to reach it.

"No, tis truth," I spoke, slapping the now dirty rag on the floor and rubbing a nose which itched with my wrist. "I have seen him. Young, handsome, pale like moonlight. He bids me to chase him and I do. But he will not let me catch him. And he will not catch me either for it."

She left her dishes, but while I thought she had come to speak to me more of my phantom, I soon discovered my error when the back of her hand slapped the back of my head.

"LIAR THOU'ST BE!"

"I speaketh truth!" I spat back.

She laughed without kindness as she returned to her precarious stack of chipped and dirty dishes. "Be grateful that you lie. If thou toldst the truth thou would be a witch and it our duty to burn thee for it."

"No witch, am I," I mumbled, loving God and hating all against Him. "Just sees things, I do."

She laughed again but would not turn to face me, afraid, bored or both all at once.

* * *

Having heard sounds of the castle blamed on my phantom, I sought to make him speak to me. But while he opened his mouth, no sound dared to escape and I thought tales of shrieking spectres suddenly things of mere fancy and overexagerated romance.

My ghost was silent.

My ghost was brooding.

He seemed shaded in darkness though he was luminescent.

I yearned to make him glow as much as his form but knew not how.

I tried to make him smile, playing the act of jester. I tried the opposite too to relieve his melancholy with the flash of a bare, but too full, leg. Still forever he kept his distance, never allowing me to get too close by either appeal to his humor or lust.

He seemed to believe that if he were to become too near it would mean our parting somehow. So a space existed between us, always, in our game of hide and seek where the other could never truly be caught.

* * *

"You are out too oft at night," said the steward in charge of the castle. He looked me over and I felt used.

"Aye," I returned.

"What art thou up to?" he said, rising and walking towards me in the servant's quarters.

"Nothing," I returned.

"Doth thou find thine amusement," he asked, grabbing me in an impure manner.

"NO!" I cried.

"Good, thou canst find it just as easily here if thou wishes," he said and tried to steal a kiss.

I pushed him away and only found salvation when two scullery maids came in. The steward pushed me down and I hit the side of a bed, holding on to it.

"Whore," the man spat as he strode by me and to the door, leaving the women to wonder what I had tried with him.

I blinked back tears which stung and bit back a sob which felt as if I were being choked.

* * *

That night, I could not go chasing after my ghost. I feared the steward would be waiting. And in the daylight when I finally could play our game, he seemed to be less reluctant to let me catch him nor to his pursuit. I had hurt him, I knew, so I took to calling after him. I pleaded with him throughout the days now, my shy, wounded spectre until I earned the attention of my fellow servants, those whom acted as if they owned us and those whom did in their way: the royalty of Denmark.

"She is mad," I knew they whispered behind my back.

Still I could not help but crying out for my ghost, whom was back to truly avoiding me.

* * *

One night I offered a supplication to my Lord that I would not be accosted and journeyed out under the moon to seek my phantom. I risked an attack by a man I did not love for the dead one that I did.

"Please," I whispered on the hill where first I had seen him. "I am sorry for having left you...My attention has not faded..."

Exhausted, I walked closer to the castle and collapsed, my heart broken and my feet both bleeding and bruised.

* * *

In first sun's rays, my eyes opened to find myself cold but colder still than only the night. My ghost had returned to me, gazing down at my collapsed form with longing and acting to stroke my hair, as if that was what he had been longing to do since ever first he had seen it blowing in the day's wild wind.

I remained there lying by his knees, feeling something like its own wind going through my long, tangled curls.

Twas how they found us.

"SHE BE A WITCH AFTER ALL!" cried one of the servant women returning to the castle. 

Her cries grew in number as more and more joined them, manh seeing me with my ghost. 

Soon he was leading me, trying to get me to run as the others began their own game of seeking me. I cried out in terror, knowing t'would not be long before they caught me, for though, now I was trying I was still hopelessly slow and woefully large.

I was pounced upon and pushed into the earth, crying out for mercy to be shown but none was given.

Caught round about the throat and grabbed at the arms, I was pushed, dragged and screaming to where they had placed a mound of twigs, of wood and kindling in preparation of my cleansing. At its heart they had erected a stake and to this I was tied as I cried and pleaded that I was no witch nor bride of devil. God I served.

And with God I died.

As I looked to the crowd, the first flame licking my feet like the tongue of the devil they thought I belonged to and charring it black, I saw my ghost in the sunlight amongst them. He was screaming out silently and crying, weeping o'er my death while the others cheered until he could only watch me in sorrow as my screams overpowered all else. And I saw it clearly written on his face then why he had run from me for so long, creating our game...

He was one cursed to bring about the death of all he loved, either by accident or by choice.

Myself now included with them.

* * *

I looked at the man whom had been responsible for my death in his own secret and horrible way and I asked him the simple question I had never offered to him before, "Pray tell, what is your name?"

There was no divide betwixt us now. He was a part of the realm of death that man is not meant to see, lest they go crazy, or thought to be such as myself, while I had been forced to call the world of the living no longer my own.

"Hamlet: the Prince of Denmark," he answered in words I could finally comprehend.

I looked to the grassy floor where I sat (our meeting place once more) and at my bare feet, thankfully not ash anymore but a far healthier color of blue. Though never in the life I had left would I ever have considered skin the color of moonlight to be healthy.

Then I realized simply that it was the fact that they whole and that I could move them more than their pale shade.

And a light was, infact, beckoning me to move towards it.

From the heavens a land of color and light, of noise and joy was being offered and my feet yearned to go to it, for it offered peace and even more stronger sense of wholeness. Yet the man standing before me looked suddenly so lonely that to move towards that light made me see the heaven offered as a hell instead and kept me sitting by him.

"Why don't you go to it?" I queried, thinking perchance we could walk to it together.

"The chance I have exchanged," he replied. "I offered my place to a girl that I wronged and loved, one whom took her own life. Madness she felt and then the act of her death, brought about by her will. Thee were not mad...and thine death was cruelly thrust upon you...from thy contact with me. Twas my lot in life to destroy; in my death it remains the same. So forgive me and go thence to thy paradise. Only think of me once though hast found the peace thou deservest."

I looked towards the light and then back towards the lonely Prince and shook my head. "And what would my God think of me shoulds't I leave thee surrendered to thine solitude? Damnation awaits those whom leave those to face their sorrows alone. And though my feet would surely step on heaven's hallowed floor, I would soon find myself tripping into the devil's arms to leave you alone and with neither company nor comfort. So thou shall have me if thou wants me."

The mere trace of a smile on lips that once moved without voice and the offering of his hand to help me rise. I took it, and as he helped me to my feet, I felt that I was not the big servant girl, made of flesh and bone but that I had been rebuilt of air and of the moonlight I mirrored.

He bestowed upon me a brighter smile, as I did upon him in return, and together we turned and walked towards the places we had roamed in his haunting of me, now abandoning happily our game of hide and seek.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I'm still mad at you. 
> 
> I still have to voice that. And maybe it will make you turn your back on these but I'd find it sad if I can still love you when you've hurt me but you would only hate me instead. Affection does not mean you can't be mad or disappointed. I said that once before. So please know how much I still care about you, okay? I just need to say this.
> 
> I said in my first note to this:
> 
> "I wish I could take you to Chuck E Cheese's for your Birthday. I never did get to go to one and I was always curious. We could have fun together and lie to the waitress or waiter that we were just waiting for our kid to show up. Or we could be honest and just say that we were young at heart."
> 
> Only after reading that interview yesterday I fear you aren't young at heart anymore. What did you say? “I just roll up my sleeves and go to work.”
> 
> What happened to the Keanu Reeves whom loved that same work? Whom loved to act even when other people said he couldn't? Whom basked in the appreciation whenever it was shown?
> 
> I sometimes read people saying you show a certain contempt for your fans. But I used to think, "No. He loves them." Then I read that quote yesterday and I'm not so sure.
> 
> Maybe it was better in those Shakespearean troupe days when small groups of actors travelled & were contained in specific areas. It certainly gave actors each a chance instead of creating superstars whom make far too much money for what they do off of fans they soon come to resent.
> 
> And then to make themselves feel less guilty, those same stars will satiate their guilt by making message films to show that they are trying to help the struggling common people. Hasn't anybody seen "Sullivan's Travels"? We common people live those struggles. We go to films to escape and forget before we have to go out and suffer some more.
> 
> That's another odd thing...you said you were never going to play Neo again. Why now? What happened recently? Why are you changing? Is it the company you are keeping? If so, get the art out of your circle of trust and find some heart instead.
> 
> I don't include Alex in that group. From what I have seen, he has heart. And from the Bill & Ted Face the Music reviews I have read, he put it and his soul into that film. Reviewers said it looked like you were only doing it as a favor. You know what a bigger favor would be? To show that you are grateful that you get paid to play pretend. 
> 
> If I could get paid to write, I would never forget that I used to have to clean houses to earn money. And sometimes the toilets I'd have to get on my knees to scrub would have a little surprise waiting for me because someone had forgotten to flush. :/
> 
> Sigh. Is the problem that I fell in love with a ghost? Just like in this story? Only the ghost is the person that you used to be. But unlike here, I've been chasing something that does not exist?
> 
> Regarding Shakespeare... Why did you think he couldn't do it? Because he wasn't well educated? Because he wasn't exactly wealthy? I'm uneducated and poor and I managed to do here in a year what Marcel "fucking" Proust took far longer than that to accomplish.
> 
> If we're gonna go back in that time machine, like I said in another note, to find out whom wrote all those plays, (you can sulk in your corner and I'll fold my arms and pout in mine and we can avoid looking at each other) I will bet you that $5 again that Willy wrote his own work.
> 
> And I'll bet I'll be right.
> 
> And then I'll go to Chuck E Cheese's afterwards, alone, so you go back to the people whom supposedly care for you but are letting you be used and become somebody that you aren't.
> 
> But while I'm sitting there, buying whatever you can these days for 5 lousy dollars, I will probably just be thinking of the other you and still hoping he may come along eventually. Because I miss knowing he is somewhere out there in the world.
> 
> You know, the guy from planet Keanu? The one whom admitted he over read to make up for dropping out of high school and who would gloriously stick his foot in his mouth with statements which were just odd instead of trying to be the darling of a media that used to mock him?
> 
> What do you think are the chances of his showing up?
> 
> I didn't think so.
> 
> But I can hope all the same.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO  
> :| <3
> 
> P.S. I spent all day writing this and changing it throughout. I'm not angry anymore, Keanu. My madness towards you seems to be a puddle. Slowly it evaporates. 24 hours seems to be its lifespan. It can't exist beyond that. I love you. *kisses cheek* I'm sorry if I hurt you in anyway with my own pain. It's gone now. I hope yours is too.
> 
> Also, my friend is doing okay following her surgery. If you prayed, thank you.


End file.
